"I should like to have a talk with one of his old friends in the hotel," I said; "the manager, for instance. No doubt he knows Mr. Farnham very well." "He does, but he's out of town on business for a day or two. I think you'll find, though, that our bartender and Mr. Farnham were about as chummy together as anyone in the house." Apparently at my leisure, really with great impatience, I repaired to the extremely handsome "barroom" of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and here the oracle was very communicative. Having mixed me a peculiarly American drink called "gin fizz," the bartender was willing to chat of Mr. Farnham. "I guess he must have been pretty bad this last time," he said, in response to my first question, "for he didn't trouble the barroom much." "He did come in, however, did he not?" I asked anxiously. "Oh, yes, he came in once or twice, but I thought he acted rather grumpy and queer." "Did you have a good look at him either time?" I pressed on, with eagerness. "Pretty good. Almost as close as you are now, I guess." "And did he appear the same as usual, with the exception of the green shade over his eyes?" "Well, I reckon he did. I was kind of busy both times, and I don't know as I took much notice." "Still"--and I called up a laugh--"you'd have known whether it really _was_ Mr. Farnham, or a stranger passing himself off in his place?" The bartender stared at me for an instant, and, had he spoken his inmost thoughts, probably they might have been appropriately expressed in the slang phrase, "Ah, what are you givin' me?" "Well, it might have been his grandfather's ghost, I daresay," he facetiously remarked at length, "but, anyhow, there seemed to be a strong resemblance between Harvey Farnham and him." I set down my glass untouched. A cold conviction was growing within me that I had been mistaken; that, villain as Carson Wildred was, he had not, after all, been guilty of the one great crime which I had attributed to him. It seemed almost impossible that this keen-eyed man, accustomed to Farnham's comings and goings for several years, could have mistaken another for him. Next morning when I had put together the few things that I had had occasion to unpack, and was "tipping" the pretty chambermaid who "chanced" to come to my door as I was departing, a sudden inspiration seized me, and I called the young woman back again as she was disappearing. "By the way," I said, "did you happen to attend a Mr. Harvey Farnham, who was here a few days ago, and who has often stopped in the hotel?" "Oh, yes, sir," she answered, "I know him quite well, and a very pleasant, generous gentleman he is--or rather" (and her face changed at some recollection), "or rather was." I caught her up eagerly. "_Was?_" I echoed. "Wasn't he the same as usual this last time?"